& MOUNTAIN FLOWERS 



359 



This is one of the most beautiful flowering shrubs found 

 growing on the highest mountains. 



" Oh, the windings up and down 

 That the dizzy pathway took ! 

 Now along the craggy bed 

 Of a sun-dried mountain brook ; 

 Now along a ledge that led 

 By a chasm's crumVjling brink, 

 Dropping deep and sheer away 

 Through the golden Syrian day 

 To the dreamy blur of pink 

 That the oleanders made, — 

 Here in sun, and there in shade. 

 Up, and up, and up we went, 

 While, a spacious azure tent, 

 Arabesqued with morn, the sky 

 Hung above us radiantly." 



Had the poet who penned these lovely lines referred to 



. . . the creamy blur of white 

 That the rhododendrons made, 



his verses would as fitly have described the finding of the 

 exquisite waxen bells of the Mountain Rhododendron as that of 



** The dreamy blur of pink 

 That the oleanders made," 



for it is on the most inaccessible ledges, and close to the great 

 slopes of eternal snow, that the oblong glossy green leaves of 

 this alpine shrub gleam brightly in the sunshine of the July 

 days, and the slim, stiff, brown stems bear aloft clustering 

 circles of pure white flowers, holding within their chalice-cups 

 the ten pale yellow stamens and the style. The edges of the 

 foliage are slightly wavy, the calyx is five-parted, each division 

 resembling a small leaf, and the corolla is bell-shaped and cut 

 into five rounded lobes. The buds are scaly and cone-like. 



